Carles Salazar *

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of prayer in the everyday life of an Irish Catholic community. Prayers are mental acts that need to be actualised following detailed instructions. This is so because prayers have to be “authentic”, which means that there has to be a correspondence between the act of praying and the mental state of believing. Due to the fact that mental states are by definition invisible, the argument of this paper is that that correspondence can only be symbolised by the very special characteristics of the act of praying. By stressing the symbolic nature of the act of praying, an alternative to recent cognitive approaches to the analysis of ritualisation is also suggested.

Keywords: prayer, ritual, symbolism, cognition, Catholicism, Ireland.

Oração e simbolização numa comunidade católica irlandesa

O objectivo deste texto é o de apresentar uma análise da oração na vida quotidiana de uma comunidade católica irlandesa. A oração é um acto mental que necessita de actualização de acordo com instruções detalhadas. Tal acontece porque as orações devem ser “autênticas”, isto é, deve haver uma correspondência entre o acto da oração e o estado mental de “crença”. Tendo em conta que os estados mentais são, por definição, invisíveis, o argumento deste artigo será que essa correspondência apenas pode ser simbolizada através das características particulares do acto de oração. Ao chamar a atenção para a natureza simbólica do acto de oração, sugere-se em consequência uma alternativa para as recentes propostas cognitivas de análise sobre ritualização.

Palavras-chave: oração, ritual, simbolismo, cognição, catolicismo, Irlanda.

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^[1] I would like to thank Ramon Sarró and Ruy Llera Blanes for their kind invitation to submit this paper to Etnográfica and an anonymous reviewer for his / her insightful comments on an earlier draft. Precious assistance by N. M. Farré i Barril is also gratefully acknowledged.

* Universitat de Lleida - salazar@hahs.udl.cat